JOIN USIndia had a good day in office as Rohan Bopanna secured a quarterfinal berth while Sania Mirza too sealed a place in the last-eight stage with their respective partners in the mixed doubles competition at Wimbledon here on Wednesday.
However, Mahesh Bhupathi’s campaign ended after losing a fiercely-fought men’s doubles quarterfinal along with partner Julian Knowle to top-seeded American twins Mike and Bob Bryan.
While Bopanna and his Chinese partner Jie Zheng overcame the fighting Swedish-Hungarian duo of Johan Brunstrom and Katalin Marosi 7-6(4), 3-6, 6-1, Sania and Horia Tecau of Romania posted a comfortable 6-1, 7-5 win over Eric Butorac of USA and Alize Cornet of France.
The seventh-seeded Bopanna and Zheng took a little less than an hour and a half to get the better of their opponents.
The Indo-Chinese duo will take on the winner of the match between Jean-Julien Rojer and Vera Dushevina and 14th seeds David Marrero and Kimiko Date-Krumm in the quarterfinals.
Bopanna has earlier sealed a spot in his first ever Wimbledon semifinals with French partner Edouard Roger-Vasselin in the men’s doubles. The Asian combo hit 19 winners as compared to just 12 by their Swedish-Hungarian rivals on the day.
After winning the first set in a tie-breaker, Bopanna and Zheng lost thesecond as their opponents converted one of the two break points they got, while the Asians failed to make use of either of the two they received.
However, the Indo-Chinese pair got their act together in the third and deciding set and they completely dominated proceedings. Bopanna and Zheng broke their opponents twice and let them take only one game out of seven to wrap the match in their favour.
Sania and her Romanian partner outplayed the French-American pair in exactly an hour.
Last night the eighth-seeded Bhupathi and Knowle fought their hearts out before bowing out with a 6-7 (5), 6-7 (3), 6-7 (4) scoreline against one of the best doubles teams in the world.
Bhupathi has already exited from the mixed doubles with Slovakian partner Daniela Hantuchova.
For Leander Paes, it was a mixed day as he advanced to the men’s doubles semifinals with Czech Radek Stepanek but suffered a tame defeat in the mixed doubles with Chinese partner Saisai Zheng.
Paes and Stepanek, seeded fourth, carved out a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 win over 11th-seeded Julien Benneteau of France and Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia.
In the mixed doubles, Paes and Zheng had lost 3-6, 3-6 to Butorac and Cornet.